The Profiteers Part 23

"You'll find him a difficult customer," Dredlinton declared. "As you know, he hates us like poison."

"He may do that," Phipps acknowledged. "I've given him cause to in my life, and hope to again. But after all, he's a shrewd fellow. He's made money on the Stock Exchange this last week, and he's had the sense not to run up against us. He's not likely to refuse a clear twenty thousand pounds' profit on some shares he's not particularly interested in."

Dredlinton knocked the ash from his cigar. He leaned over towards his companion.

"Look here, Phipps," he said, "you can never reckon exactly on what a fellow like Wingate will do or what he won't do. It is just possible I may be able to help in this matter."

"Good man!" the other exclaimed. "How?"

Dredlinton hesitated for a moment. There was a particularly ugly smile upon his lips.

"Let us put it in this way," he said. "Supposing you fail altogether with Wingate?"

"Well?"

"Supposing you then pa.s.s him on to me and I succeed in getting him to sell the shares? What about it?"

"It will be worth a thousand pounds to you," Phipps declared.

"Two!"

Phipps shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't bargain," he said, "but two let it be--that is, of course, on condition that I have previously failed."

Dredlinton's dull eyes glittered. The slight contraction of his lips did nothing to improve his appearance.

"I shall do my best," he promised.

There was a knock at the door. A clerk from outside presented himself. As he held the door for a moment ajar, a wave of tangled sounds swept into the room,--the metallic clash of a score of typewriters, the shouting and bargaining of eager customers, the tinkle of telephones in the long series of cubicles.

"Mr. Wingate is here to see you, sir," the young man announced.

"You can show him in," Peter Phipps directed.

CHAPTER XIV

Phipps received his visitor with a genial smile and outstretched hand.

"Delighted to see you, Mr. Wingate," he said heartily. "Take a chair, please. I do not know whether you smoke in the mornings, but these Cabanas," he added, opening the box, "are extraordinarily mild and I think quite pleasant."

Wingate refused both the chair and the cigars and appeared not to notice the outstretched hand.

"You will forgive my reminding you, Mr. Phipps," he remarked drily, "that my visit this morning is not one of good-will. I should not be here at all except for Lord Dredlinton's a.s.surance that the business on which you desired to see me has nothing whatever to do with the British and Imperial Granaries."

"Nothing in the world, Mr. Wingate," was the prompt declaration. "We would very much rather receive you here as a friend, but we will, if you choose, respect your prejudices and come to the point at once."

"In one moment."

"You have something to say first?"

"I have," Wingate replied gravely. "I should not willingly have sought you out. I do not, as a matter of fact, consider that any director of the British and Imperial Granaries deserves even a word of warning. But since I am here, I am going to offer it."

"Of warning?" Dredlinton muttered, glancing up nervously.

"Precisely," Wingate a.s.sented. "You, Mr. Phipps, and Lord Dredlinton, and your fellow directors, have inaugurated and are carrying on a business, or enterprise, whichever you choose to call it, founded upon an utterly immoral and brutal basis. Your operations in the course of a few months have raised to a ridiculous price the staple food of the poorer cla.s.ses, at a time when distress and suffering are already amongst them. I have spent a considerable portion of my time since I arrived in England studying this matter, and this is the conclusion at which I have arrived."

"My dear Mr. Wingate, one moment," Phipps intervened. "The magnitude of our operations in wheat has been immensely exaggerated. We are not abnormally large holders. There are a dozen firms in the market, buying."

"Those dozen firms," was the swift reply, "are agents of yours."

"That is a statement which you cannot possibly substantiate," Phipps declared irritably. "It is simply Stock Exchange gossip."

"For once, then," Wingate went on, "Stock Exchange gossip is the truth."

"My dear Mr. Wingate," Phipps expostulated, "if you will discuss this matter, I beg that you will do so as a business man and not as a sentimentalist. Yon know perfectly well that as long as the principles of barter exist, there must be a loser and a gainer."

"The ordinary principles of barter," Wingate contended, "do not apply to material from which the people's food is made. I speak to you as man to man. You have started an enterprise of which I and others declare ourselves the avowed enemies. I am here to warn you, both of you," he added, including Lord Dredlinton with a sweep of his hand, "directors of the British and Imperial Granaries, that unless you release and compel your agents to release such stocks of wheat as will bring bread down to a reasonable price, you stand in personal danger. Is that clear enough?"

"Clear enough," Dredlinton muttered, "but what the mischief does it all mean?"

"You threaten us?" Phipps asked calmly.

"I do indeed," Wingate a.s.sented. "I threaten you. I threaten you. Peter Phipps, you, Lord Dredlinton, and I threaten your absent directors. I came over here prepared for something in the nature of a financial duel.

I came prepared to match my millions and my brain against yours. I find no inducement to do so. The struggle is uninspiring. My efforts would only prolong it. Quicker means must be found to deal with you."

"You are misled as to your facts, Mr. Wingate," Phipps expostulated. "I can a.s.sure you that we are conducting a perfectly legitimate undertaking.

We have kept all the time well within the law."

"You may be within the law of the moment," was the stern reply, "but morally you are worse than the most outrageous bucket-shop keepers of Wall Street. Legislation may be slow and Parliament hampered by precedent, but the people have never wanted champions when they have a righteous cause. I tell you that you cannot carry this thing through.

Better disgorge your profits and sell while you have a chance."

Dredlinton tapped a cigarette against his desk and lit it.

"My dear fellow," he said, "you really ought to go into Parliament. Such eloquence is rather wasted in a City office."

"I rather imagined that it would be," Wingate a.s.sented. "At the same time, I warned you that if I came I should speak my mind."

Phipps did his best for peace. This was his enemy with whom he was now face to face, but the final issue was not yet. He spoke suavely and persuasively.

"Come, come," he said, "Wingate, you have changed since you and I fought our battles in New York and Chicago. To-day you seem to be representing a very worthy but misguided cla.s.s of the community--the sentimentalists.

They are invariably trying to alter by legislation conditions which are automatic. It is true that our operations over here may temporarily make bread dearer, but on the other hand we may be facing the other way within a month. We may be sellers of wheat, and the loaf then will be cheaper than it ever has been. I am an Englishman, and it is not my desire to add to the sufferings of my fellow countrymen."

"You don't care a d.a.m.n about any one's sufferings," Wingate retorted, "so long as you can make money out of them."